The predatory neo-liberal capitalism that has become the norm in India over the last two decades raises many uncomfortable questions. Today, consumption defines what we are. And with the western capitalist model reigning supreme, all of us seem to have been reduced to being just consumers in the eyes of the government. The effect on India's peasantry has been tremendous. The recent tragic stories played out in Kalinganagar, Singur and Nandigram show how many farmers suddenly find themselves up against the might of the state. The 'theft' of agricultural land from poor farmers in the name of progress has become routine. Meanwhile, private corporations continue to ravage the country's natural resources without any protest from the administration. In Desire Named Develoent, Aditya Nigam makes the case for dismantling some cherished beliefs and for restructuring the economy and our cities in particular ways. A substantial change in government policies and individual consumption habits can still make another world possible for India's future.

The predatory neo-liberal capitalism that has become the norm in India over the last two decades raises many uncomfortable questions. Today, consumption defines what we are. And with the western capitalist model reigning supreme, all of us seem to have been reduced to being just consumers in the eyes of the government. The effect on India's peasantry has been tremendous. The recent tragic stories played out in Kalinganagar, Singur and Nandigram show how many farmers suddenly find themselves up against the might of the state. The theft of agricultural land from poor farmers in the name of progress has become routine. Meanwhile, private corporations continue to ravage the country's natural resources without any protest from the administration. In Desire Named Development, Aditya Nigam makes the case for dismantling some cherished beliefs and for restructuring the economy and our cities in particular ways. A substantial change in government policies and individual consumption habits can still make another world possible for India's future. Nigam makes a strong case for dismantling some cherished beliefs and for restructuring the economy and our cities in particular ways.

Indian diaspora has had a complex and multifaceted role in catalyzing, justifying and promoting a transformed urban landscape in India. Focussing on Kolkata/ Calcutta, this book analyses the changing landscapes over the past two decades of one of the world’s most fascinating and iconic cities. Previously better known due to its post-Independence decline into overcrowded poverty, pollution and despair, in recent years it has experience a revitalization that echoes India’s renaissance as a whole in the new millennium. This book weaves together narratives of migration and diasporas, postmodern developmentalism and neoliberal urbanism, and identity and belonging in the Global South. It examines the rise of middle-class environmental initiatives and Kolkata’s attempts to reclaim its earlier global status. It suggests that a form of global gentrification is taking place, through which people and place are being fundamentally restructured. Based on a decade’s worth of field research and investigation in multiple sites - metropolitan centers connected by long histories of empire, migration, economy, and culture - it employs a multi-methods approach and uses ethnographic, semi-structured interviews as well as archival research for much of the empirical data collected. Addressing urban change and policies, as well as spatial and discoursive transformations that are occurring in India, it will be of interest to researchers in the field of urban geography, urban and regional planning, environmental studies, diaspora studies and South Asian studies.

This handbook offers an analysis of Asian diaspora and development, and explores the role that immigrants living within diasporic and transnational communities play in the development of their host countries and their homeland. Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary scholars from across the world, the handbook is divided into the following sections: • Development Potential of Asian Diasporas • Diaspora, Homeland, and Development • Gender, Generation, and Identities • Soft Power, Mobilization, and Development • Media, Culture, and Representations. Presenting cutting-edge research on several dimensions of diaspora and development, Routledge Handbook of Asian Diaspora and Development provides a platform for further discussion in the fields of migration studies, diaspora studies, transnational studies, race relations, ethnic studies, gender studies, globalization, Asian studies, and research methods.

Enacting Globalization consists of a rich set of papers with a variety of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on Globalization and its portrayal through International Integration as manifested by its myriad flows such as people, trade, capital and knowledge flows.

“An engaging, innovative, and wide-ranging account of the way in which anticolonial thought in India creatively reconceptualized the idea of popular sovereignty. It sheds new light on the theoretical relationship between democratic legitimation and development.” —Pratap Bhanu Mehta An original reconstruction of how the debates over peoplehood defined Indian anticolonial thought, and a bold new framework for theorizing the global career of democracy. Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peoplehood in India. The purported “backwardness” of Indians as a people led to a democratic legitimation of empire, justifying self-government at home and imperial rule in the colonies. In response, Indian anticolonial thinkers launched a searching critique of the modern ideal of peoplehood. Waiting for the People is the first account of Indian answers to the question of peoplehood in political theory. From Surendranath Banerjea and Radhakamal Mukerjee to Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian political thinkers passionately explored the fraught theoretical space between sovereignty and government. In different ways, Indian anticolonial thinkers worked to address the developmental assumptions built into the modern problem of peoplehood, scrutinizing contemporary European definitions of “the people” and the assumption that a unified peoplehood was a prerequisite for self-government. Nazmul Sultan demonstrates how the anticolonial reckoning with the ideal of popular sovereignty fostered novel insights into the globalization of democracy and ultimately drove India’s twentieth-century political transformation. Waiting for the People excavates, at once, the alternative forms and trajectories proposed for India’s path to popular sovereignty and the intellectual choices that laid the foundation for postcolonial democracy. In so doing, it uncovers largely unheralded Indian contributions to democratic theory at large. India’s effort to reconfigure the relationship between popular sovereignty and self-government proves a key event in the global history of political thought, one from which a great deal remains to be learned.

This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something ‘out there’ that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to rethink the concepts of climate change, vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity in transformed ways. With case studies drawn from Pakistan, India and Mongolia, it demonstrates concretely how climatic change emerges as a dynamic force in the ongoing transformation of contested rural landscapes. In crafting this synthesis, the book recalibrates the frameworks we use to envisage climatic change in the context of contemporary debates over development, livelihoods and poverty. With its unique theoretical contribution and case study material, this book will appeal to researchers and students in environmental studies, sociology, geography, politics and development studies.